Tag Archives: Binary Partners

BIG thanks to all who came to see the three-theremin spectacle that was last night’s Paisley Babylon performance. I did the opening set as Paisley Babylon and then stayed on stage as half of Binary Partners. It was a very good night indeed and it was nearly two full hours of unusual, hallucinatory entertainment that would have pleased Timothy Leary, William Burroughs, and probably Stephen Stapleton.

Here are some images from the show, there was a full recording of both performances and that will become available at some point. Stay tuned for details.

As all of Paisley Babylon, I write a lot of music using the theremin, and as half of Binary Partners I perform live using the theremin exclusively as of late. My last five shows have featured the theremin as my main instrument, and the one coming this Saturday 1 Feb is no exception.

I will perform theremin duties once more on stage as half of Binary Partners at Jerry’s, located at 1938 W. Division Street in Chicago. This show will likely be the most insane one to date as I’m running a ridiculous number of effects pedals and creating a theremin sound so large and threatening that some could mistake it for natural phenomena.

That’s NOT to say that this is a NOISE show per se–it is NOT that–but with this setup the theremin is capable of damn near weaponized volumes of sound. I prefer to use such things as punctuation, not as the whole sentence, as it were. But the loud-quiet-loud approach worked great for The Pixies, so why not with BP?

I’ve been using the theremin more and more in my soundtrack work and it’s gratifying that more people are interested in these sounds. It should be said, I’m no Clara Rockmore–I have no interest in playing sonatas with my instrument. Call me the J.G. Thirlwell of the theremin and you’re barking up the right tree.

Joe Wallace performs as half of Binary Partners when he isn’t working solo as Paisley Babylon. Binary Partners is playing a show at Spectrum in New York City on Friday . Wallace is playing Theremin, tape manipulations, and echo machines on Friday as part of the 20th anniversary celebration of the Thanatos album “This Endless Night Inside”.

Paisley Babylon ideas, imagery, and aesthetics are well represented by Binary Partners, but BP features more Burroughs and more emphasis on sound design as music. It should be a pretty heady evening indeed!

Paisley Babylon’s next full-length release is nearly finished. Called “Electronic Acid”, the album so far is 11 tracks of surrealism, a dose of harsh ambient, a dash of power electronics, aural hallucinations and inner journeys to outer space. Samples are coming soon, and there will be a single or two released from this album in remixed form prior to the official album launch.

In the meantime, Paisley Babylon’s Joe Wallace has been working with Esmeralda Trujillo on a project called Binary Partners, with a live performance scheduled in December ahead of a full-length LP release scheduled for early 2013. In the meantime, here’s a sample of what to expect from Binary Partners, which is a return to old-school first generation industrial and experimental music (before the industrial genre became overtaken by sequenced drum tracks, cocaine abuse, and football fans–think Throbbing Gristle, Coil, and Wire rather than Ministry and Pigface.)